Jorge Rodriguez, chief of the “Simón Bolívar” campaign to win eternal re-election rights for President Chavez on 15 February, is foaming at the mouth.

Chavez’s victory on 15 February is “certain.”

The opposition is protesting in the streets “because they know they’re lost.”

The campaign command has “information” about opposition plans to stage fake self-attacks against themselves, stoke street violence and spread instability.

The opposition also set fire to the Avila mountain.

Greater Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, who can’t enter the building where his offices are located because it is occupied by gun-toting thugs, is “a murderer” responsible for the death of a woman street vendor in 1996, when he was last mayor of Caracas.

Rodriguez is on a roll, matching his master in terms of venting threats and unsubstantiated accusations against everyone opposed to Chavez’s bid to become the country’s president-for-life.

Rodriguez was elected mayor of Libertador district in last November’s regional elections. But his full-time job is running Chavez’s perpetual re-election campaign.

It can’t be a happy job, however loyal to Chavez Rodriguez might be.

Rodriguez earned Chavez’s favor in August 2004 when, as head of the National Electoral Council (CNE), he successfully rigged the outcome of Chavez’s recall referendum by digitally transforming the opposition’s lopsided 60-40 victory into last-minute 60-40 win for Chavez.

That electoral fraud was masterfully engineered by Rodriguez, though he was unwittingly helped in no small measure by a witless political opposition.

The recall fraud also was endorsed by former US President Jimmy Carter and then-OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria, both of whom ducked their heads and bailed out of Venezuela immediately.

The Carter Center for Democracy has never recovered from the stain to its international reputation left by the Chavez recall referendum of August 2004, though its director, Dr. Jennifer McCoy, has returned to Venezuela many times, proving she has more professional and personal integrity (and larger cojones) than her boss.

Gaviria’s endorsement of Rodriguez’s impeccably executed electoral in August 2004 was predictable. The OAS has no institutional tools or expertise in supervising election processes. The fact that OAS “observers” visit voting centers to watch the “process” unfold is completely irrelevant.

Besides, Gaviria by August 2004 had been honey-trapped in a Venezuelan/Cuban intelligence sting in Caracas, a source who worked in Venezuelan military intel ops from 2000-2005 tells us. “There is a video,” this source says.

But that was over four years ago, and now Rodriguez faces a much greater challenge. He no longer controls the CNE, but somehow he must guarantee a Chavez victory in the 15 February referendum. Chavez has made it very clear to his followers that failure is not an option. The outcome must be a landslide victory, or else.